One of the cruellest things about this game (and, let’s be honest, one of the most enjoyable) is that any time a team fails to meet expectations the talk will inevitably turn to changes; be they at the coaching level or among the players.

The Vancouver Whitecaps 3-2 defeat in Colorado that ended their playoff hopes means that Martin Rennie and his team are at just such a juncture and, before any decisions concerning the players can be made, there needs to be clarification on the status of the coach.

So the main question facing the Whitecaps now is whether Martin Rennie has earned at least one more season in Vancouver.

There are times when the decision to keep or can a coach can be fairly straightforward; abysmal failure or unexpected success leave little room for the nuances of debate and discussion but, much like his team this season, Rennie has shown glimpses of why he might be worth sticking with and glimpses of why he might not be worth the risk.

None of us who have watched the majority of games can realistically hope to approach the question with even a modicum of impartiality, but let’s at least try to view both sides of the coin before coming to our own decisions.

There’s little room here for listing everything that went right or wrong during 2013, but here are some of the larger issues.

Perhaps the biggest negative for Rennie is that anybody who watched the Whitecaps week in and week out would still be hard pressed to say what his preferred formation or first eleven is. There was a period where 4-3-3 was working brilliantly, but it relied so much on the combined efforts of Miller, Camilo and Teibert up front that the removal (or loss of form) of any one of that triumvirate left the Whitecaps looking lost.

There was also the sense that other coaches had figured the Whitecaps out by late summer, leaving a once prolific team suddenly short of goals.

Which brings us to another negative for Rennie; his seeming inability to adapt to in game situations.

How frustrating it was earlier in the season to see other teams make changes to both their personnel and formation while the Whitecaps kept on keeping on until the final ten (and sometimes later) minutes of a game, by which time the potential for any substitute to make an impact was severely limited.

To his credit toward the latter half of the campaign Rennie began to be much more proactive in terms of earlier substitutions, but there was still the sense that these changes were more by rote than by reason.

We saw in the recent home game against Portland and the loss to Colorado that any attempt to alter the narrative flow of a match was limited to throwing on more and more attacking players; not a bad move in and of itself on occasion, but the idea that more is necessarily better betrays a limited view of how best to unsettle the opposition.

Another red mark in Rennie’s ledger is the way he approached road games.

He will no doubt point to the indisputable fact that the Whitecaps record away from BC Place has improved on last season, but much of that improvement is down to the recent 3-0 and 4-1 victories in Montreal and Seattle respectively; games that Vancouver had to win.

It’s galling to wonder what they might have achieved if they had adopted the same positive approach earlier in the year; and, in addition, they maybe would not have had to wait until June to record their first three points on the road (against a ten man New York).

None of that sounds great for the coach, but there are undoubted positives that he can point to.

And one of the things he can point to is points. The Whitecaps already have more of them than last year, which is about as an objective measure that you can get that a team has improved, and the fact that Rennie has been accumulating those points in a very strong Western Conference is down to misfortune rather than mismanagement.

He can also claim to have produced a team that has played entertaining football at BC Place, with only the 1-0 defeat to Real Salt Lake going down as a bad game, meaning that even when the result wasn’t good it’s doubtful that many of the home fans left the ground feeling that they hadn’t been entertained.

He can also argue that he has dealt with some serious injury issues incredibly well. The central defenders seemed cursed since jay DeMerit limped off injured in the opening minutes of the first game but O’Brien, Leveron, Mitchell and Rusin have all been integrated into the lineup about as seamlessly as could be expected.

And Rennie may also feel that if Kenny Miller had been able to produce a full season in attack then maybe the Whitecaps would have produced more points and still be in the playoff hunt.

And finally, and this is surely his strongest card, he has won a trophy.

The Cascadia Cup may be the slightest (in terms of public perception) of all the trophies on offer at the start of the year, but it’s a lot harder to win than the Canadian Championship and it gives proof to the fact that Rennie has finally been able to get his players to perform in important games (and, whatever the previous criticism of his in game tactical thinking, he had the courage to play a an untried lineup in a vital game in Seattle and was rewarded with the performance of the season).

Which leaves us where exactly?

As I noted earlier this isn’t a cut and dried case and, sadly for those of us who like to pontificate from the outside, Rennie’s future will ultimately hang upon how he is perceived within the club.

Does he have the respect of the players and the coaches? (There were some post-game interviews that seemed to imply that this wasn’t the case, but that may be just whispers in the wind).

Is he able to define what went wrong this season and does he have realistic plans to rectify it?

Rennie’s relentless positivity in post-game interviews soon became tiresome but if, in private, he can pin point specific improvements within the squad, the team and the tactics that can be implemented next season then he has permission to laugh like a drain for the whole of 2014 for all that it matters.

And finally; did he meet any targets that were set for him at the beginning of the season?

If his challenge was to improve the team’s points haul or win a trophy then he has succeeded. If his challenge was to make the playoffs and/or win the Canadian Championship then he has failed.

If it was a combination of those two then the Front Office has to decide which take priority.

It’s not going to be an easy decision whichever way it falls and it could all come down to a sliver of fact that tips the scales one way or the other but (and this is where cruelty and enjoyment intertwine to reveal us to be all too human) oh to be a fly on the wall when the meeting does take place!

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